Sunday, 28 October 2012

Tomb of William the Silent in the Nieuwe Kerk, Delft, with an Illusionistic curtain: Emanuel de Witte (1617-1692), 1653, oil on panel, 83 cm x 65 cm (private collection)

He didn't hear them at all as they came up the stairs.
He didn't have time to think about where they may have found the key.That which he called duration was cut -- and he didn't even seethe incision on the floor. They drewthe huge black curtain in front of him, while above him
he could hear the scraping sound of the nickel rings -- high up, on the invisible wire, loosely stretched,high up, in the clandestine sky that finally belonged to him.

The Dutch painter Emanuel de Witte (1617-1672) was active in his native Alkmaar, then
in Rotterdam (by
1639), Delft (by 1641), and Amsterdam (by 1652). His range was wide
(he produced historical paintings, genre scenes, notably of markets, and
portraits);
but after settling in Amsterdam in the early 1650s he concentrated on
architectural paintings, primarily church interiors, both real (see e.g. the third and fourth images in this post, Interior of the Oude Kerk, Delft, 1650-52, with detail) and imaginary (e.g. the bottom image here, Interior of a Protestant Gothic Church,
1669). His paintings differ considerably in spirit from the
sober views of better known
Dutch architectural specialists, making dramatic use of the intricate
play of light and shadow in the lofty interiors (while also providing a
convincing answer to the worried question, did dogs ever piss in Reformation churches?). This artist's life was not happy
(he was constantly in debt) and when his body was found in an Amsterdam
canal it was generally supposed that he had committed suicide.

A murder mystery? where the suspense is all with the reader and the victim only becomes aware of his dying as his life ebbs. There seems to be more "redemption" in this story than the Thomas. I get the sense that there is release here from a certain tawdriness of existence .... The beginning part to me is like an assemblage of key stills from a film noir. The ending like a cheaply made set that our main character is finally set free from ...

Ritsos was the first poet I totally fell in love with. I was working at a bookstore--13 or 14 years old I'd guess. His book didn't sell, so the shop keeper gave it to me. I love how he ends his poems--as if he is always pulling me back into the poem, just as I think I am leaving . . .

as he left, almost arrogantly,one could hear something like the sound of cloth ripping (a strange sound):a corner of the flag was held back, trapped by the god's foot.

This poem was writ during the ten-year dictatorship of Colonel George Papadopoulos, a period during which the poet suffered much. As a longtime Communist, he was arrested immediately after the 1967 coup, sent to an island prison camp; and thence to another. There followed hospitalization in Athens, and then, in 1968, exile, under house arrest at his wife's home on the island of Samos (she was a practising physician there). He was permitted to return to his Athens apartment in 1970. It was during these latter years that this poem was written.